How Do Outbound Links Affect SEO?
Published May 15, 2010
Many people are still unsure about the impact of outbound links on SEO. Is it worth your time to build outbound links as a means of adding value to your site? Is it going to make any difference to the search engines who your outbound links point to or how many you have or how many people click on them? If so, where can you find the best sites to link to what is the most sound strategy for building outbound links? If you’re curious about the answers to these questions, this article will tell you what kind of impact outbound links have on your SEO and how you can develop a strong outbound linking strategy.
Many people are still unsure about the impact of outbound links on SEO. Is it worth your time to build outbound links as a means of adding value to your site? Is it going to make any difference to the search engines who your outbound links point to or how many you have or how many people click on them? If so, where can you find the best sites to link to what is the most sound strategy for building outbound links? If you’re curious about the answers to these questions, this article will tell you what kind of impact outbound links have on your SEO and how you can develop a strong outbound linking strategy.
The Impact of Outbound Links
Many SEO experts claim that the search engines rank sites according to hundred of factors and that outbound links is most likely one of them. This is because having outbound links on your website demonstrates that you are adding value for your visitors by providing them with links to additional information on your subject. Another thing to consider is that user behaviors, such as clicking on links which lead to other pages/site, also has a significant impact on your site’s SEO. In other words, if the search engines see that there is a lot of user activity on your site, that demonstrates that people are getting value out of your site and can have a positive impact on your SEO.
The building of outbound links is also valuable for building relationships with other website and blog owners, since the links will likely bring traffic to their sites. If their site is within the same niche as yours and you’re bringing a lot of traffic, the site owner might eventually take notice and visit your site to see what it's all about. This of course makes other business owners in the Internet community aware of your presence which could open the door for joint ventures and other marketing opportunities. Finally, reading outbound links which lead to credible site can raise your visitors perceived credibility of your site.
What Kinds of Sites to Link to
When building an outbound links on your website, many of the same rules apply which apply in building inbound links. For example, it's important to make sure that you link to sites which are credible and which are relevant to your niche. Linking to sites which appear to be only spam sites or which aren’t professional in their appearance or in their content can significantly lower your visitor’s perceived value of your site. Not to mention that if one of your visitors get sent to a spam site from your site, they’re not likely to want to visit your page site again.
The same is true if you are linking to sites which are not relevant to yours, it shows your visitors that you either aren’t an expert on your subject or it frustrates them because they’re not getting what they expect when they click on your outbound links.
Moderate Use of Outbound Links
Having too many outbound links causes you are websites to appear as link farm or spam site and can potentially hurt your site’s SEO. For best results, create outbound links either for the sake of providing additional information for your visitors or in some cases as a link to a product which is reviewed on your site. In the case of the latter, just make sure that your site is still providing valuable content your visitors instead of simply pointing them to promotional offers.
Look of Your Outbound Links
When adding outbound links to your site, it's also important to make sure that the keywords in your anchor text match the content of the site you're linking to. This serves the purpose of assisting the site you're linking to in retaining and building value with the search engines which will help you build a good application within your niche. Remember, it’s important for a site to have their keywords in the anchor text of inbound links which are leading back to their site. So if your site includes outbound links which include keywords which aren't relevant to the site are linking to, you could actually been negatively affecting the other sites a SEO.
On top of this, you could be bringing in visitors to someone else’s site who will leave immediately after finding out that it didn't contain the information they expected. This could negatively affect the other site’s bounce rate and enough sites that you’re linking to get enough of this kind of inbound traffic, it could hurt your site’s reputation with other site owners.
Outbound Linking from a Marketing Perspective
Some online marketers claim that outbound links to other sites drives traffic away from your site and therefore is a poor marketing strategy. However, if your outbound links are providing valuable information to your visitors and raising the perceived value of your site and of your reputation as an expert, it will help you to build trust with your visitors which is always good for marketing. Also, if your outbound links lead to affiliate offers and if your site is also providing valuable content about the offer and why the visitor should get involve with it, outbound linking can become a great strategy for monetizing your website.
Conclusion
Considering the above points, it’s probably a good idea to add outbound linking to your SEO and marketing strategy. As long as you’re providing valuable and relevant content to your visitors, the strategy of outbound link building can be a good investment of time and effort.
Other articles on SEO, Link Building and Online Marketing
Link Buildling Basics
Top Resources for SEO Beginners
Prevent Duplicate Content and Control Your Indexing
Creating a Good Marketing Funnel
Link Buildling Basics
Top Resources for SEO Beginners
Prevent Duplicate Content and Control Your Indexing
Creating a Good Marketing Funnel
To gain access to the most up-to-date SEO strategies, fill out the form below to sign up for our newsletter. This newsletter will help you know what Google's up to as well as how you can get your website ranking higher without raising any red flags.
{"http://www.seositecheckup.com/articles/76":{"data":[]}}
Read Related Articles About On Page SEO
- How to Build Relationships and Your Brand With the New Google Images
It?s virtually impossible to say ?SEO? without thinking ?Google.? Google has always been THE search engine to figure out in the world of internet marketing. If you can utilize the free tools they offer, your SEO campaign will be dramatically better than a campaign which does not. - What We Know: a Guide to "The New SEO"
We can't know everything ? especially after the latest algorithm re-haul. After extensive testing and trial-and-error, though, we've been able to determine a framework for getting real results on the search engine positions. - Taking a "Value First, SEO Second" Approach to Internet Marketing
SEO is, by far, the top strategy used by internet marketers and online business owners. It's easy to see why ? with SEO, you open the floodgates to thousands of unique and "targeted" visitors. These people are searching for a website in your niche, so naturally, once they find it, they?ll be likely to buy your product/service. - Three Examples of a Solid Keyword Strategy
It's not that NONE of the old SEO strategies work ? it's just that SEO is in a near constant state of evolution. The best internet marketers realize this and plan ahead with their SEO strategies. When Google makes a change to their algorithm, savvy internet marketers make changes to their SEO campaigns, ensuring their websites stay on page #1 regardless of what Google's doing. - Five Ways to Make Your SEO Process More Organic to Users and Search Engines
Most marketers know that they need to make their SEO and content creation process more organic. If your link building or your content creation appears unnatural or ?spammy,? you can end up setting yourself back weeks or even months in your endeavor to achieve favorable search engine rankings. - Where the Duplicate Content Rule Came from And How it Really Impacts Your SEO
If you have been spending a lot of money on creating hundreds of unique articles or spinning articles in order to create enough unique content for your article submissions, this might be one of the most important things you?ve read in a long time. Contrary to what many have come to believe, content duplication is something which you can use in your content marketing strategy, and if you do it right, it won?t hurt your SEO. - Five Creative Ways to Add Value and Credibility to Your Website
Value and credibility are the two most important factors when it comes to growing your website. Although they are synergistic (meaning when you focus on one, the other one also improves), you should always be putting yourself in the position of your viewers when building a website. - When Seconds Count: The Importance of Fast Loading Times
Search engines are becoming more conscious of loading times when it comes to determining the rank of your website and also PPC quality scores. However, just how important is page load time the owner of the website? Does it really make that big of a difference when it comes to the bottom line goal for your website to generate qualified traffic and to achieve conversions? In this article, we'll be looking at some spastics which might surprise you about the difference which your page load time makes. - How to Create Well Optimized and Natural Sounding Content
When it comes to creating content for your website or articles for building links back, it can be difficult to create something which is well optimized with your target keywords but which also looks smooth and natural to your human readers. Optimized, keyword rich content often sounds mechanical and even grammatically incorrect, especially when it comes to optimizing for long tail keywords. - SEO Site Structure Principles
Learn the important guidelines for properly structuring your site for search engines. - Using Silo Structure or Maximum On Page SEO Effectiveness
A common problem for on page optimization is keeping the content within your website organized so that the search engines can make a clear distinction as to the theme or your pages. - Speed Up Your Website to Increase Traffic
Learn how speeding up your website can drive traffic and sales. Also learn common methods for decreasing page loading times. - Five Simple Things You Can Do to Increase Conversions On Your Website
The ultimate goal of having a website is to generate more business for your organization. This is true whether your objective is to generate more leads for off-line services, sell shippable products, sell memberships or sell downloadable products. Of course, one way to do this is to achieve a higher ranking with the search engines and to thus attract more traffic to your site. - How to Optimize Your Meta-titles, Descriptions and Keywords
The term "meta data" is used to describe information within the coding of your site that the search engines use to index your site. The search engine companies send programs called "spiders" out to gather information about your site and determine how to display it in the search results page. - How to Use Effective Meta Tags
Learn how to effectively use meta-tags to increase your search engine visibilty and referral traffic. - Alt Tags and Other Image Optimization Tools
Having an attractive site is important for making a good first impression on your visitors. This is why it's crucial that you use great looking images to accompany your site copy and to communicate the overall "personality" of your company. - Traffic Conversion Strategies
Learn several great strategies for improving conversions on your website. - How Analytics Tools Can Guide Your SEO Efforts
Learn how and which analytics tools can improve your SEO efforts. - Split Testing to Improve Your Site's Performance
Learn how split testing can greatly improve conversions and user behaviors on your site. - Are Doorway Pages an Effective SEO Technique?
Learn about doorway pages, how they work, and if they are an effective SEO technique. - How to Optimize Your PPC Landing Page for the Google Quality Score
Pay per click (PPC) marketing can prove to be an effective tool for driving traffic to your site and testing variables to optimize your traffic conversion. However, succeeding at PPC marketing takes more than just placing a bid per click that will get you in the top position. It’s also important that your website’s “quality score” is up to par. Without a great quality score,
All Categories:
- Basic SEO (19 articles)
- Online Marketing Tips (18 articles)
- Off Page SEO (13 articles)
- Social Media Marketing (12 articles)
- Seo Product Reviews (4 articles)
- SEO News (6 articles)
- SEO Content Creation (14 articles)
- SEO Programming Topics (14 articles)
- How to Avoid SEO Pitfalls (9 articles)
- SEO Outsourcing (6 articles)
- How to Get More Traffic (10 articles)
- Advanced SEO Strategies (2 articles)
